Love the World or Get Killed Trying

Love the World or Get Killed Trying

The English language debut from novelist Alvina Chamberland Through playful poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30. The reader is invited to follow her journey through the breathtaking wilderness of Iceland and busy city boulevards of Berlin and Paris as she probes questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you're a ceaseless target of straight men's secret lust and open disgust. This novel tackles universal issues through a trans woman's specific lens - insisting on these experiences speaking to far more than just issues of sexuality and gender. Reaching its climax through an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love-manifesto, LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING is a raw and vulnerable work of magical brutalist autofiction; abstract in the sense of poetically digging beneath the surface, and experimental in the sense of trying to find out new things and express them in new ways, while concretely asserting that if trans women one day collectively outed every man who seeks them out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall. "Alvina Chamberland writes with every part of herself. Hers is an honesty in perfect balance with generosity, and reading this book is like receiving an ongoing gift."--Torrey Peters Fiction. LGBTQ+ Studies. "A trans performance artist wrestles with the hypersexualization she faces from straight men in Swedish American author Chamberland's ardent and autofictional English-language debut. On the precipice of turning 30, Berlin-based Alvina sets out on a 'dead-serious and gallows-silly mission' to enter into the male-dominated travelogue genre by writing about her trip to Iceland. She takes the reader on hikes to glaciers, where she's awed by the beauty of ash-covered ice columns ('Reality pops up like something out of a big-budget, action-adventure feature film') and moved to tears by their melting...This thrums with life." - Publishers Weekly "In this Swedish author's English-language debut work of autofiction, a trans woman named Alvina is about to turn 30. Contemplating a variety of existential concerns — sexuality, longing, death, et cetera — she travels around Europe, from Iceland to Berlin and Paris, trying to figure out how to keep herself from becoming bitter and hard. Exhausted at being the target of straight men's disgust on the one hand and deep lust on the other, Alvina's stream-of-consciousness narration is sharp, cathartic, and so worth reading." - Ilana Masad "Raw, generous, autofiction." - Karla J. Strand The English language debut from novelist Alvina Chamberland Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-US American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels. In 2015 Bokförlaget ETC published her co-authored book Allt som är Mitt: Våldtäkt, Stigmatisering och Upprättelse (English translation: All that is mine: Rape, Stigmatization and Reparation). The book received a grant from the Swedish Arts Council. In September 2018 her novel Utelåst-Uppväxt- nostalgi för freaks (Locked Out - A nostalgic account of growing up for freaks) a parody of the coming of age-genre, was published by Dockhaveri Förlag. She resides between Athens and Berlin and has no real hobbies, only intensity and serenity. LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING is her English language debut.